The Powerhouse, Dartford

Following the acquisition of the Littlebrook former power station, Bericote embarked on a £25 million programme of demolition, remediation and infrastructure provision to serve the 120 acre site.

We agreed with Amazon to develop a new state-of-the-art fulfilment centre, now pre-let on a 20 year lease.

The unit, set out over 4 floors and totalling 2,300,000 sq ft is fitted out to handle high volumes of goods incorporating complex automation and robotics systems.

ESG

No gas mains connection to the building. The roof is fitted with the largest PV scheme in the UK (3.5MW), which now supplies 40% of the building’s operations. The offices have been fitted with a green roof and the new flood defences with a green wall. We installed 40 electric vehicle charging spaces and achieved BREEAM excellent.

During demolition of the former Littlebrook Power Station, we were able to recycle 99.1% of materials (a total of 120,624 tonnes), saving £9.1 million in landfill cost. The carbon equivalent saving in excess of 2.6million tonnes of CO2.

We set aside over 6 acres (30% of the site) for permanent open space and biodiversity improvement. We have supplied benches made by a local charity using waste timber from construction, introduced 1 million bees and enhanced the habitat for local rare shrill and carder bees. The site also includes a free employee cycle scheme.

We are proud main sponsors of community owned Dartford FC, work closely with local YMCA charity, sponsoring their community café and honestly yearly Christmas parties for kids. We had over 500 school children visit the scheme throughout construction.